I came in on the early (7:15 am) bus to New York City, took a cab across town and then climbed the 5 flights of steps to my sister's apartment.

I breathed hard for a while then we went out for lunch at an Indian restaurant. I had a lovely hot curry lamb Vindaloo (which had too much garlic in it but I didn't know it at the time) and Paula slurped down some chicken korma. Just water with lunch- no really! then over to Bonnie and Joe's mystery book store (a.k.a. The Black Orchid) to watch Paula pile books on the counter to buy. They gave us 2 free ones, too! probably to thank her for the article that showed up in the Times last week talking about "Black Orchid" in which Paula was quoted as saying how nice the place is.

Then back to the apt to watch football (Florida won). Get dressed up (seriously) and take the subway out to Eaamon Doran on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights for the meeting. I brought the digital camera and make a nuisance of myself by taking piccies of everyone. Dorothy Stix was there and I got lots of piccies of her and friends. It was great seeing the crew again. The usual toasts were given. Her Majesty the Queen, Emilia Lucca, Dr Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle and a tribute to Tom Stix by Susan Rice and Al Rosenblatt.

Two people gave papers. One on Conan Doyle and skiing in the Alps and one on showing how Holmes met Americans and knew about the civil war and was able to visit New York as a secret agent in 1912 (via the Secretary of State for the Confederacy and the ship buyer for the Confederacy and Teddy Roosevelt being the son of the ship buyer's sister). Dr Robert Katz gave that paper and Julia Rosenblatt did the ski one. Apparently the Rosenblatts had done a story on the ski/Doyle connection in Skiing Magazine in 1982. Who knew? She had lots of great slides of snow and of Al digging in the snow for the stone commemorating Doyle's ski run over a pass in the Swiss Alps.

Oh yeah, food! I had the baked striped bass with a strange but good fruit sauceand veggies- others had garlic roasted chicken or pork chops with red caper sauce and a special anniversary cake for dessert.